Cropping Sequence in Micro-Scale Vegetable Gardens in the Northwest Region of Cameroon

Abstract

Micro-scale agriculture plays a key role in Cameroon’s economy. However, poor farm planning and suboptimal sequencing of farm operations among other factors tend to frustrate farmers, resulting to mismanagement of the often meager resources at their disposal. This study sought to find out an annual cropping pattern or sequence for vegetable farmers that maximizes annual returns and enhances the optimal allocation and utilization of farm resources amidst weather risks and climate variability. With the case of the Northwest Region of Cameroon, this study made use of primary data collected with the help of a questionnaire administered to randomly sampled vegetable farmers from 6 preselected farm communities. Dynamic programming techniques were applied to estimate a recursive farm model. This study identified three cropping seasons per year, the cultivation of five main classes of vegetables and over 15 species in the study area. The findings of this work further specified that vegetable farming was most profitable during the drier periods of the year. Farmers were advised to priorities the cultivation of the fruit vegetables during the first and third cropping seasons while the leafy vegetables were advised to be prioritized during the second cropping season (fruit-leafy-fruit vegetable cropping sequence). The findings of this work justified that adjusting cropping patterns as recommended, without a necessary increase in resource use, a farmer can make an annual profit of 5155307 FCFA, which is significantly higher than the average profit of 4298909.667 FCFA realized from cultivating of all the five vegetable enterprise combinations in the study area.